By now your company has likely established its own protocol when it comes to social media marketing. You’ve heard the statistics, done the training and you understand the power of social media and how it impacts your brand. But over time, while the extremely fast-paced social media world continues to evolve, it’s a good idea to check in on your social media strategy and see if there are any new approaches that your company could adopt to reap better results from your social media marketing efforts. Below we will discuss 3 of these opportunities for your brand.
1. Take advantage of Stories
If you’ve been sticking to your old social media strategy for quite some time now, it’s possible that you’ve missed a few opportunities for marketing your brand and business. The big social platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are not just about the newsfeed these days. Brands and individuals alike have the ability to create Stories that disappear after 24-hours to encourage your followers to check in daily. These Stories can be a collection of video snippets and photos from an interesting day or a relevant event, and they can include text overlays and filters to connect with your audience in a casual and fun way.
A fun fact about Instagram Stories: You can add links to your Stories so that when someone swipes the screen, they are taken to a specific URL. This is a great way to get traffic to your site! (Facebook is still testing the linking feature, but it’s likely they will roll this out before too long.)
Need a little extra insight before getting into Stories? Here are a few tutorials to get you started:
Facebook Stories Tutorial
Instagram Stories Tutorial
2. Hold the pitch and listen to your audience
There’s a time and place to make solid pitches on your social media platforms. In fact, you’ll find an abundance of social media marketing strategies that teach the art of pitching. What you want to avoid is creating a scenario where all of your posts are pitches, and there’s little to no effort put into reaching out to and listening to your audience. Your audience holds a critical key to your brand’s success if you’re willing to hear what they have to say. Essentially, social media gives you free analytics on what your potential and current customers are talking about, liking and disliking.
Our recommendation: Carve out a good chunk of time to review comments on your company profiles, follow conversations in groups where potential customers are posting frequently, and even publish posts to ask your audience questions. The information you’ll receive can set the tone for future campaigns, posts and even new and innovative product or service ideas.
3. Consider micro-influencers or affiliates to help drive sales
You’ve likely heard of and seen in action the power of influencer marketing. This is when a well-known celebrity or social media influencer uses their platform to talk up a product or service and push sales. While this can be a highly effective strategy for large brands, many companies are now taking advantage of a similar concept, but with a more reasonable payout: micro-influencers and affiliates.
Micro-influencers are not celebrities but just normal people on social media, usually with less than 10k followers. The benefit – they have an audience that genuinely trusts them, which means more engagement and more targeted traffic for your brand. You may not see as large of a reach as a celebrity influencer, but it’s more about quality over quantity, and we think that’s always a great strategy!
Affiliates are another great way to help drive sales for your brand. Affiliates earn a commission for marketing your brand’s products or services, which makes it a sweet deal for your company – you only pay when they bring in a sale! Affiliate sales are often tracked through a unique website link which allows you to have multiple affiliates marketing the same products and services for your brand.
We do recommend that if you’re going to choose a micro-influencer or affiliate marketing approach, you want to be sure you have the structures and best practices in place to help guide your team to success.
Marketing and sales fads come and go every day in the online space, especially on social media platforms. While some of these tactics could align with your brand, it’s important to stay committed to your own strategy when it comes to social media marketing. There’s a lot to be said for staying true to your brand and values as a company in a world that is continuously changing.
As always, be sure to reach out to our expert marketing strategists to help get your brand back on track with a social media strategy that fits your brand!